From fake psychic to artist: The mystic transformation of Jose Alvarez
Palm Beach Post
By Scott Eyman
May 6, 2011
Among the four gifted artists featured in the Norton Museum of Art’s new “Altered States” exhibit, there is only one who started out on an entirely different career path.
How different? Extremely different.
Jose Alvarez of Fort Lauderdale was a fake psychic. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he was a fake channeler, a fake seer.
He traveled all over the world, claiming to be inhabited by a 2,000-year-old spirit named Carlos, in order to expose con artists and refute mystic beliefs.
Today, Alvarez has a thriving career creating artworks with vivid colors and glossy surfaces, including a custom mural that stretches nearly 60 feet across the Norton’s lobby.
But 25 years ago, the Venezuelan native was on another path. Fired up after an overly literal reading of ’60s pop-religious author Carlos Castenada, the then-18-year-old Alvarez went to one of James Randi’s rationalist lectures, prepared to show him the myriad ways he was wrong.
Randi is the famous 82-year-old Fort Lauderdale magician who evolved into a professional skeptic with a specialty in exposing fraudulent metaphysicians.
Alvarez listened and got an education, as Randi convinced him his entire belief system was predicated on an appalling credulousness – shamans were frauds and psychics were con artists.
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